Terrestrial vehicle size vs starship size comparison?

[JiCi]

Starship base frames are sized from Tiny to Supercolossal, but... how does that compare to terrestrial vehicles sizes, which range from Tiny (wingboard) to Colossal?

For instance, how big is a Tiny Racer (smallest starship frame) compared to a terrestrial vehicle? Huge? Gargantuan? Colossal?

[Cellion]

Terrestrial vehicles use the same size scale as creatures do, while the Starship scales are much larger and are somewhat (I think deliberately) vague.

The CRB gives Starship lengths by size category as:

CRB wrote:

Size Length

Tiny 20–60 ft.
Small 60–120 ft.
Medium 120–300 ft.
Large 300–800 ft.
Huge 800–2,000 ft.
Gargantuan 2,000–15,000 ft.
Colossal Over 15,000 ft.

Which would peg a tiny starship as at least gargantuan-sized on the terrestrial scale.

[JiCi]

Cellion wrote:

Terrestrial vehicles use the same size scale as creatures do, while the Starship scales are much larger and are somewhat (I think deliberately) vague.

The CRB gives Starship lengths by size category as:

CRB wrote:

Size Length

Tiny 20–60 ft.
Small 60–120 ft.
Medium 120–300 ft.
Large 300–800 ft.
Huge 800–2,000 ft.
Gargantuan 2,000–15,000 ft.
Colossal Over 15,000 ft.

Which would peg a tiny starship as at least gargantuan-sized on the terrestrial scale.

Page 294... wow... how did I miss this XD ?

Thanks for the info :)

I got curious when mechs were discussed and about their sizes. A hanger bay "can be installed only in a Gargantuan or larger starship and takes up 4 expansion bays. A hangar bay provides a place for up to 8 Tiny starships to dock."

So... by calculations, that's 8 Gargantuan mechs or even 8 Warmaster's Harness Powered Armors, or 16 Huge mechs (4 Huge things to make a Gargantuan one), or 64 Large mechs or 64 Commander's Harness Powered Armors (4 Large things to make a Huge one).

[Pantshandshake]

But you don't need a hangar bay to keep your extra power armors in, because they aren't ships.

[HammerJack]

Pantshandshake wrote:

But you don't need a hangar bay to keep your extra power armors in, because they aren't ships.

If you're talking about huge and gargantuan PA, you may not need to use a hangar bay, but the amount of cargo bay space they take up instead starts becoming relevant, since they definitely don't fit in the closet in your quarters.

[Pantshandshake]

HammerJack wrote:

If you're talking about huge and gargantuan PA, you may not need to use a hangar bay, but the amount of cargo bay space they take up instead starts becoming relevant, since they definitely don't fit in the closet in your quarters.

True story. Hopefully by the point you're high enough level to have a bigger than large power armor you've got enough of a ship to transport them. Add a little dash of GM discretion, and you should be good to go.

As far as trying to fly 16 Huge things around, that doesn't seem like personal use, if you can afford that many mechs then you're certainly to be better off just bringing your eleventy-billion UBPs with you and crafting on-site.

Or, my personal favorite, just hang half of you outside the cargo bay door while yelling "WOOOOOOOOOOOO" into your suit radio for the whole journey.

[JiCi]

Pantshandshake wrote:

HammerJack wrote:

If you're talking about huge and gargantuan PA, you may not need to use a hangar bay, but the amount of cargo bay space they take up instead starts becoming relevant, since they definitely don't fit in the closet in your quarters.

True story. Hopefully by the point you're high enough level to have a bigger than large power armor you've got enough of a ship to transport them. Add a little dash of GM discretion, and you should be good to go.

As far as trying to fly 16 Huge things around, that doesn't seem like personal use, if you can afford that many mechs then you're certainly to be better off just bringing your eleventy-billion UBPs with you and crafting on-site.

Or, my personal favorite, just hang half of you outside the cargo bay door while yelling "WOOOOOOOOOOOO" into your suit radio for the whole journey.

Well, it's more about you and whoever you're travelling with. Let's say you're travelling with the Starfinder Society on their way to Kalo-Mahoi, they could have Personal Submersibles, which are Large (level 7). When travelling to another planet, they might be transporting Flight Frames (Huge; level 11) due to the lack of solid ground.

[Pantshandshake]

JiCi wrote:

Well, it's more about you and whoever you're travelling with. Let's say you're travelling with the Starfinder Society on their way to Kalo-Mahoi, they could have Personal Submersibles, which are Large (level 7). When travelling to another planet, they might be transporting Flight Frames (Huge; level 11) due to the lack of solid ground.

That's fair, but at that point the group is just a bunch of passengers on an NPC/GM ship, which only needs to follow The Rules of The Plot.

I mean, I guess the GM could follow the ship building and cargo capacity rules, but I probably wouldn't.

And in your example, it's still so much easier to bring a pile of UPBs and craft whatever environmental stuff is needed once you get where you're going.

[JiCi]

Pantshandshake wrote:

That's fair, but at that point the group is just a bunch of passengers on an NPC/GM ship, which only needs to follow The Rules of The Plot.

I mean, I guess the GM could follow the ship building and cargo capacity rules, but I probably wouldn't.

And in your example, it's still so much easier to bring a pile of UPBs and craft whatever environmental stuff is needed once you get where you're going.

There... are probably more chances that PCs will start their adventuring careers as part of a crew before striking on their own. Furthermore, starships are pretty expensive to purchase or even to use for passage. Finally, it seems easier to join a crew that just happen to go in the same direction as you at first than going into the Drift all alone :P

[Pantshandshake]

If spaceships are expensive in your games, I feel bad for you, buddy.

[Garretmander]

If you can afford a bunch of mechs, you can probably equip a big ship to carry them around...

I mean it sounds like a nice bit of lore theorycrafting, but I'm not sure when it would really come up in the rules, and not have a simple workaround.

[JiCi]

Pantshandshake wrote:

If spaceships are expensive in your games, I feel bad for you, buddy.

Well, you never know ^^;

Garretmander wrote:

If you can afford a bunch of mechs, you can probably equip a big ship to carry them around...

I mean it sounds like a nice bit of lore theorycrafting, but I'm not sure when it would really come up in the rules, and not have a simple workaround.

Well, you never know ^^;

[Toxicsyn]

If you wanna compare size, look at the flip mat for the Sunrise Maiden. The ship is a medium explorer. That flip mat is fricking huge.

[Qaianna]

I guess one other question is how quickly they need to be deployed. I assume a hangar bay is designed to launch right then and there while a cargo bay is less 'scramble fighters' and more 'assemble fighters, here's a screwdriver, get to work'.

[Metaphysician]

Qaianna wrote:

I guess one other question is how quickly they need to be deployed. I assume a hangar bay is designed to launch right then and there while a cargo bay is less 'scramble fighters' and more 'assemble fighters, here's a screwdriver, get to work'.

That's my take, as well. You can load vehicles and even small starships into cargo bays, but depending on the size, you definitely don't have a usable spacefighter ready to deploy.

[JiCi]

Well whaddayanow :P

Mechs are Huge, Gargantuan or Colossal, so...

8 Gargantuan mechs or 36 Huge mechs :P

[Shifty]

The cargo bay rules are strange and bizarre and make no sense.

"A cargo hold can contain approximately 25 tons of goods, with no item being larger than Large. A starship with multiple cargo holds can hold larger objects; usually 4 contiguous cargo holds are required to hold Huge objects and 8 for Gargantuan objects. These size restrictions can be overridden at the GM’s discretion".

We had a whole thread about the subject in these forums where we pointed out how flawed and inconsistent the rules were.

[JiCi]

Shifty wrote:

The cargo bay rules are strange and bizarre and make no sense.

"A cargo hold can contain approximately 25 tons of goods, with no item being larger than Large. A starship with multiple cargo holds can hold larger objects; usually 4 contiguous cargo holds are required to hold Huge objects and 8 for Gargantuan objects. These size restrictions can be overridden at the GM’s discretion".

We had a whole thread about the subject in these forums where we pointed out how flawed and inconsistent the rules were.

Well, cargo can be of any shape and size ^^;

[Senko]

Dwarf star matter: Size Medium, weight, 30 tons.
Artwork: Size Huge, Weight 5 tons.

"Nope cant carry either of those in my cargo hold.

Gets weirder when you have extradimensional storage spaces yet they aren't used on starships only personel and terrestial vehicles.

Personally I want to override the rules and make them more reliant on can it fit and can it not tear apart the hull due to Weight than the current rules. However I've not had time to really grapple with it though I've a few ideas where to start. Besides the obvious that is of whether you'd be better off looking at ship or airplane cargo holds for inspiration as they function very differently.

Id suggest the amory for your power armour rather than the cargo hold. It's an expansion bay.

EDIT
It didn't take that much work at all a little research and the new cargo hold rules I'll use just came together.

[Ixal]

Numbers are all well and good, but to really comprehend the size of things pictures are way better.

I use ships as they are the vehicles closest to the purpose of spaceships and cover a large range of sizes. I also only focus on length, so especially on the smaller size categories its possible that the spaceships are larger by being higher than the ships, simply as they do not have to deal with stability to no capsize.

tiny:

Minimum tiny hull size 20ft
Common motorboats for one or multiple persons sitting tightly together. Obviously nothing for long term voyages

Maximum tiny hull size 60ft
While it can be used for longer voyages with multiple people they better know each other very well or have some iron discipline to not murder each other after a few weeks of travel. The ability to bring cargo or have workshops is also rather limited to nonexisting.
Just as a point of reference, a F-15 fighter is also just 60ft long.

small:

Minimum small hull size 60ft
While it can be used for longer voyages with multiple people they better know each other very well or have some iron discipline to not murder each other after a few weeks of travel. The ability to bring cargo or have workshops is also rather limited to nonexisting.

Maximum small hull size 120ft
Enough space for multiple people but not much cargo or expansion bays although its certainly possible to add several workshops etc. to it. Still nothing I would want to spend up to a month in with multiple other people, especially as this ship is supposed to have 3 expansion bays.

medium:

Minimum medium hull size 120ft
Enough space for multiple people but not much cargo or expansion bays although its certainly possible to add several workshops etc. to it. Still nothing I would want to spend up to a month in with multiple other people.

Maximum medium hull size 300ft
Enough room for cargo, although not on a industrial scale, or utility rooms and enough space to not be at each others throats even during week long trips. Although if you have large species in the crew the available space can shrink very fast when your rooms and corridors are build to accommodate them and you use the transport configuration with 5 expansion bays instead of 4 in the explorer.

large:

Minimum large hull size 300ft
Enough room for cargo, although not on a industrial scale, or utility rooms and enough space to not be at each others throats even during week long trips. Although if you have large species in the crew the available space can shrink very fast when your rooms and corridors are build to accommodate them.

Maximum large hull size 800ft.
A big jump from vessels for small groups of people to large commercial ships to transport a lot of people (the Titanic was only 80 ft longer than this example) or for mass cargo.

huge:

Minimum huge hull size 800ft.
Large ships with equally large crews, especially if you do more than just cargo hauling. Enough space for PCs to do whatever they want, but you will need NPCs to really crew those ships.

Largest ship ever build 1500ft
Not the maximum of this size category, but there simply never were larger ships than the Seawise Giant shown here and it is still 500ft short. As you can imagine at this point size restrictions become rather theoretical or when you are into bulk cargo hauling which PCs usually don't do.

Maximum huge hull size 2000ft.
As there are no ships of this size I had to use a picture of a building. And not just any building, the Shanghai Tower is the 2nd, soon 3rd tallest building in the world and roughly as tall as a huge ship is long.

I do not think there is any sense for pictures for the following size categories as those are so large that even with pictures its hard to comprehend them as I mainly have to use mountains. The maximum gargantuan ships are nearly 3 miles long.

[Ixal]

I forgot the Sunrise Maiden which would be as long and 3 times as wide as this ship.

The usable space of the Sunrise Maiden according to its map is 200ftx100ft with just a single deck.
So while it looks large on paper it actually isn't.

[Senko]

Ixal wrote:

I forgot the Sunrise Maiden which would be as long and 3 times as wide as this ship.

The usable space of the Sunrise Maiden according to its map is 200ftx100ft with just a single deck.
So while it looks large on paper it actually isn't.

Interesting I'm mucking around with a medium transport at the moment and debating what values to use. I like the j type royal yacht from starwars episode 1 (which is given at 76 meters long and from what I can work out around 38.15 meters wide) though I'm thinking I might scale it up a little to 90 meters long giving me a width of around 45 meters. Either way it'd be 3 decks or around 12 meters high.

Sooo . . .

90m
This long.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Motor_Yacht_Nero. JPG/1200px-Motor_Yacht_Nero.JPG
this wide
http://www.lucidyacht.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Sunrise-45-picSOLD.jpg

76m
this long
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Ocean_victory.JPG /1200px-Ocean_victory.JPG
this wide
https://cdn.luxatic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Sanlorenzo-SD126-Superya cht-1.jpg

and either way this high
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcStNvwQDY2klfE7-WGUm ccPio4LWEc-Q9V5AA&usqp=CAU

or to put it another way if it was as long as the 90m Nero it'd be nearly 4 times as wide whereas if it was as long as the 76m ebony shine it'd be around 3 times as wide. Hmmmm . . . I'd prefer to go with the Ebony Shine length but I'm not sure I can fit everything in given that the ships are generally 5+ decks and my transport would technically be only 2.

EDIT
Thinking about starwars isn't the Executor bigger than Everest?

[Ixal]

Senko wrote:

EDIT
Thinking about starwars isn't the Executor bigger than Everest?

Yes, its 19km/~12 miles. Basically you would need nearly a full day to walk from one end to the other. At this point the sizes have become completely rediculus. Whats the point of a ship this big?

One thing to keep in mind is that starships tend to be wider than boats, so the medium size would actually be 3 yachts next to each other. On the other hand all example ships I have seen so far only have a single deck, probably to keep the maps simple, while even small yachts have at least 2. So the usable area would be around 1.5 or 2 times the one of a medium sized yacht used for small trips.

Granted, you could do long dustance trips with it. For example the Sunrise Maiden has about 2-3 times the usable space as the Santa Maria Columbus used to travel to America when you take the amount of decks into consideration.

So in my opinion medium or smaller starships in SF are a lot smaller than a lot of people think while large and larger spaceships are much larger than what their capabilities would suggest. Also there is a huge jump within the large category when you go from minimum to maximum size.

[Senko]

Yes that's something I've been discovering trying to map it out. Either my expansion bay's are massive, I've huge areas of unused ship or I scale it down to much smaller size only then I run into issues with the cargo hold since trying to make it a decent size forces a minimum width on the ship.

[Ixal]

Senko wrote:

Yes that's something I've been discovering trying to map it out. Either my expansion bay's are massive, I've huge areas of unused ship or I scale it down to much smaller size only then I run into issues with the cargo hold since trying to make it a decent size forces a minimum width on the ship.

You could of course always take a page from the Traveller RPG and say that ships are 1/3 to 1/2 fuel tanks. It is of course weird why fuel is never mentioned, but Starfinder abstracts so much away anyway it doesn't really matter.

[Senko]

Ixal wrote:

Senko wrote:

Yes that's something I've been discovering trying to map it out. Either my expansion bay's are massive, I've huge areas of unused ship or I scale it down to much smaller size only then I run into issues with the cargo hold since trying to make it a decent size forces a minimum width on the ship.

You could of course always take a page from the Traveller RPG and say that ships are 1/3 to 1/2 fuel tanks. It is of course weird why fuel is never mentioned, but Starfinder abstracts so much away anyway it doesn't really matter.

I think I've got it with a bit of fiddling see here https://paizo.com/threads/rzs436hk?Does-this-ship-deckplan-look-ok#1 where I'm asking for second opinions if your interested.

[Metaphysician]

Ixal wrote:

Senko wrote:

Yes that's something I've been discovering trying to map it out. Either my expansion bay's are massive, I've huge areas of unused ship or I scale it down to much smaller size only then I run into issues with the cargo hold since trying to make it a decent size forces a minimum width on the ship.

You could of course always take a page from the Traveller RPG and say that ships are 1/3 to 1/2 fuel tanks. It is of course weird why fuel is never mentioned, but Starfinder abstracts so much away anyway it doesn't really matter.

Doesn't have to be fuel. You can always say that major systems like power cores, engines, or drift drives take up a suitably large amount of space. I mean, think about the floor plan for the Space Shuttle, compared to its overall dimensions.

Likewise for superhuge vessels. The Executor might seem absurd at 19km long, but that size might be necessary in order to fit the giant docking bays full of ships ( not all of them fighter sized ), heavy guns the size of small skyscrapers, shield generators big enough to protect something the size of a mountain, and engines able to move a mountain. Plus, the power cores needed to supply all the above might well be as big as a somewhat smaller mountain, themselves.

Human warships in the Halo games actually are an even better example, as they are huge because they are essentially one giant spinal railgun the entire length of the ship, surrounded by as much empty space as the engines can manage. Because the primary defense in-setting against capital-class weapons is "Be hit in a place that won't cripple you". However, Halo leans to slightly harder sci-fi than either Star Wars or Pathfinder.

[Ixal]

Metaphysician wrote:

Ixal wrote:

Senko wrote:

Yes that's something I've been discovering trying to map it out. Either my expansion bay's are massive, I've huge areas of unused ship or I scale it down to much smaller size only then I run into issues with the cargo hold since trying to make it a decent size forces a minimum width on the ship.

You could of course always take a page from the Traveller RPG and say that ships are 1/3 to 1/2 fuel tanks. It is of course weird why fuel is never mentioned, but Starfinder abstracts so much away anyway it doesn't really matter.

Doesn't have to be fuel. You can always say that major systems like power cores, engines, or drift drives take up a suitably large amount of space. I mean, think about the floor plan for the Space Shuttle, compared to its overall dimensions.

Likewise for superhuge vessels. The Executor might seem absurd at 19km long, but that size might be necessary in order to fit the giant docking bays full of ships ( not all of them fighter sized ), heavy guns the size of small skyscrapers, shield generators big enough to protect something the size of a mountain, and engines able to move a mountain. Plus, the power cores needed to supply all the above might well be as big as a somewhat smaller mountain, themselves.

Human warships in the Halo games actually are an even better example, as they are huge because they are essentially one giant spinal railgun the entire length of the ship, surrounded by as much empty space as the engines can manage. Because the primary defense in-setting against capital-class weapons is "Be hit in a place that won't cripple you". However, Halo leans to slightly harder sci-fi than either Star Wars or Pathfinder.

Not by much, if the Mag guns in Halo would work as described they would blow planets apart.

But generally yes, you could find other stuff like gravity generators to fill the space.
I just mentioned fuel because thats how Traveller works which in my opinion has a rather nice ship creation. But in Traveller the FTL requires huge amount of fuel which means a lot of space is fuel tanks (the 100D rule it has also solves the "jump while still landed on the planet" which would be possible in Starfinder, only that you would need a calculator or at least some experience to handwave it).

[Senko]

The spinal mount weapons they introduced in starship operations are nasty Vortex Devourer (6d12 x 10) does a maximum of 720 points of damage when it hits. Unless you add things like Ablative armour that's enough to wipe out Superior shields and still destroy a dreadnaught class ship. Even with other defenses like Ablative armour it'd be a devestating hit.

Fair point about fitting life support rooms and the like into the empty space.

[Hanomir]

Senko wrote:

The spinal mount weapons they introduced in starship operations are nasty Vortex Devourer (6d12 x 10) does a maximum of 720 points of damage when it hits.

Max 780 if it's the only weapon that gunner fires in a round. And zero if the target has even a single point of shield facing you. :) Myself, I'd stick to something a bit more modest, maybe a Nova Ram for an average of 330/390 damage on everything in a line.

It's really a tragedy you can't get a second spinal mount on anything. Not that I'd want two of them, I just want to be able to make it an Array weapon (for no BP or PCU cost, no less - sheesh) so you can better recreate a wave motion gun firing a cone of doom.

I suppose we'll have to make due with giving our ubernaughts capital-grade Super X-Laser Cannon Arrays instead. It's only shooting everything in the front quarter for a piddling 70-ish damage but it's still got Line so you're probably getting more than one shot on multiple targets as the various firing lines overlap each other. Blibdoolpoolp help an enemy fleet that approaches that in a congo line.

[Senko]

If you've got the BP consider making them of Adamantium alloy meaning its especially effective against non-shielded enemies. So you do 30 to 120 (average 70) damage to everything in sight normally. However if their shields are down the formula changes to ((3d4) + 3) X 10 meaning your now doing 60 to 150 damage to them.

Currently I'm playing around with the idea of a mining ship that has deployable mining lasers. So it can fire out drones to cut through the surrounding asteroids. Completely unnecessary but I like the idea of deploying mining drones to slice up asteroids for processing.

[Hanomir]

Drone mining would fit quite a lot of scifi tropes. Has some obvious safety advantages if you're in some kind of implausibly dense and hyperactive Star Wars style rock field too - or if you're somehow or other unsure which rocks might be volatile or filled with magma or something. Shouldn't have bought those cut-rate sensors if that's the issue. :)